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Crusading Age
The Crusading Age lasted from about 1095 AD until 12014 AD. It began with the call of Pope Urban II for a religious war to retake the Holy Lands. It then ended with the controversial sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, which began the decline of the Crusading ideal over the next century. The Crusades were the most controversial chapter in the history of Western Christianity. Under the implied moral authority of the papacy, the First Crusade carved out states in Palestine and Syria. Subsequent Crusades attempted to retain and stabilise this first experiment in European colonialism. They were often farcically disorganised, and as often used to justify savage and ruthless massacres of Muslims, Jews, and other non-Western Christians. They paint Medieval Europe as a barbarous culture driven by greed and fanaticism, especially when compared to the relative mildness and tolerance of the Muslims once the tide turned in their favour under Saladin. While the two-century attempt to recover the Holy Land ultimately failed, they had a profound impact on Western civilisation, enabling the Italian maritime states to flourish and reopen the Mediterranean to commerce and travel, and reinforcing the connection between Western Christendom, feudalism, and militarism. They also marked the emergence of Western Europe as a significant power, after centuries of lagging behind other Mediterranean civilizations, such as the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Empire. The interaction between the Christendom and the Islamic world led to improved perceptions of Islamic culture, and was an important factor in the development of the Renaissance. Meanwhile, in Norman England after a period of civil war, the Normans recovered to invaded Ireland by force in 1169 and soon established themselves throughout the south and east of the country; the start of the long and troubled history between the two that continued to today. History First Crusade Since the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Manzikert (1071), the Byzantine Empire had lost considerable territory in Anatolia to the invading Muslim Seljuk Turks. After years of internal chaos, Emperor Alexios I (1081-1118 AD) seized the Byzantine throne and consolidated control over the remains of the empire. From 1092, the Byzantines finally got some respite on their eastern frontier. The Seljuk Empire (Sunni), already at was war with Fatimid Egypt (Shia), entering its own period of internal chaos prompted by a succession crisis, and fractured into numerous regional powers. Emperor Alexios sensed the opportunity to regain lost Byzantine territory, but lacked the soldiers to go on the offensive. With some warming of relations with Rome, Alexios wrote a faithful letter to Pope Urban II (1088-99 AD) appealing for Western support against the Seljuqs. What he expected was some mercenaries, that would allow the Byzantines to continue to serve as the bulwark of Christendom against the Muslim east. Instead he got the First Crusade (1096-99). At the time, Western Christendom was in the midst of the protracted struggle for power between the pope and the feudal monarchs, that had begun with the Investiture Controversy against the Germanic Holy Roman Emperor, and would continue in England and France. Alexios' call for aid seemed to offer the perfect opportunity to united all of Western Europe under papal authority in a holy war for Christianity. At a great assembly of the Church at Clermont, Urban delivered the single most effective speech in medieval Europe, summoning a righteous war to free their fellow Christians in the east from the tyranny of Muslim infidels and recover the holy city of Jerusalem. In fact, although Jerusalem was within the Muslim world, they freely allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the city. Fighting between the Seljuks and Fatimids in the region had made the pilgrim trails more dangerous in recent years. The pope's appeal met with a more enthusiastic response than he could have dreamed. Many great feudal lords of France, Normandy, Flanders and Italy pledged themselves to the First Crusade on the spot, and soon it seemed that entire nations were on the move as Crusading fever swept Europe. Although still backward when compared with the other civilizations, Western Europe had become a potent military power by the end of the 11th century. The Crusading knights would gain a reputation for rapacious greed and brutality, but many of them paupered themselves in order to fight for their faith; much of this wealth would end up in the hands of the Church, buying feudal estates for a fraction of their value. The religious fervour ignited violence even before the Crusaders left Europe, particularly against local Jewish communities, with thousands massacred at Speyer, Worms and Mainz. The flower of European chivalry, however, were not the first to undertake the arduous journey towards Jerusalem. A charismatic and slovenly French priest called Peter the Hermit stirred-up an almost hysterical enthusiasm among the peasantry, and arrived at the gates of Constantinople in August 1996, with some forty-thousand unofficial Crusaders, mostly peasants and petty nobles; the People's Crusade. Emperor Alexios tried to persuade them to wait for the official Crusade, but in the end ferried them across the Hellespont. In Anatolia, the undisciplined rabble were predictably all but whipped out by the Seljuk forces; Peter the Hermit and some 3,000 survivors returned to Byzantine territory to await the official Crusade. In early 1997, the proper Crusader armies arrived in Constantinople, almost sixty-thousand strong, with a steady stream of stragglers reinforcing their number in the months that followed. Nominally under the overall leadership of Bishop Adhemar of Clermont, it consisted of four main armies: the German contingent under Godfrey of Bouillon; the southern French contingent under Raymond of Toulouse; the northern French contingent of Hugh of Vermandois; and the Italian Norman contingent under Bohemond of Taranto. The arrival of the Italian Norman in Constantinople was especially controversial since much of their land had been seized from the Byzantines. Had it not been for the skilled diplomacy of Emperor Alexios, the situation could have been catastrophic, but the armies were ferried to Anatolia without major incident; the Byzantines would not be so fortunate on future Crusades. Before the Crusaders were allowed to leave Constantinople, they were also required to swear an oath that any former Byzantine cities that were captured would be handed back to the Byzantines. The Muslim Turks at first paid little heed to this new army, assuming it could be dealt with as easily as Peter’s rabble. The Crusader’s immediate target was the port-city of Nicaea which was besieged, while the Byzantine fleet blockaded the port. After five weeks, the former Byzantine citizens within the city surrendered to Emperor Alexios, on the assurance that the city would not be sacked and looted. Although the Byzantine Emperor ensured that the Crusaders were well-paid, the already strained relations began to sour. The Turkish Sultan finally mustered a proper response on the hundred mile march from Nicaea to Antioch, ambushing one branch of the Crusader army. However, the knights deployed in a tight-knit defensive formation, and withstood a five hour onslaught, until the rest of the army relieved them; the Turks broke and fled before their ferocious heavy cavalry charge. In the aftermath, the Turks turned to scorched earth tactics, making the rest of the march to Antioch in the height of summer a desperate test of endurance. Even before they reached the city, the first Crusader knight, a morally flexible Norman called Baldwin, had peeled off from the rest and began carving out a fiefdom for himself in southern Armenia; the Crusader State of Edessa. Arriving at Antioch, the Crusader armies began the gruelling siege of the city, which dragged-on through a bitterly cold Syrian winter. The city was so large, the Crusaders couldn’t even fully surround it, and it continued to be resupplied throughout. Fortunately, the Muslims world was so utterly divided that relief forces came sporadically and with their own agendas, and were all driven off. After eight long months the first of the leaders of the Crusades, Stephen II of Blois, abandoned the siege and returns home. When Stephen travelled through Constantinople, the Byzantines were convinced to essentially abandon the Crusaders to their fate, and recalled the Byzantine officials travelling with the Crusaders. The withdrawal of their representative seemed to motivate the Crusaders, for now if they could take the great city they could claim it for themselves. On 2 June, a disaffected Armenian guard within the city allowed the Crusaders to scale the walls and open the gates. The Crusaders subsequently massacred thousands of Christian civilians along with Muslims, unable to tell them apart. However, just days later a Muslim army arrived, and the former besiegers became the besieged. At this point, one Crusader claimed to have discovered within the city the relic of the Holy Lance, the lance that had pierced the side of Jesus as he hung on the cross; there were already at least two other relics in Europe at the time that also claimed to be the Holy Lance. Spurred on by this miracle, the Crusaders defeated the Muslims in a pitched battle outside the city walls. In the aftermath, a plague broke out in the city, killing Bishop Adhemar. The Bishop had been a conciliatory voice within the leadership, and the Crusaders remained in Antioch for almost a year, while they squabbled over who would claim Antioch and who should lead them on to Jerusalem. Finally, at the beginning of 1099 AD, the march restarted under the Raymond IV of Toulouse, leaving Bohemond I of Taranto behind as the first Prince of Antioch. Now, the brutal reputation of the Crusaders preceded them, and they encountered little resistance as they moved south. Finally after three long years, they reached their ultimate goal; Jerusalem. With too few men to besiege the city, the Crusaders were forced to take the city by direct assault. After five weeks on 15 July 1099 AD, a final push was launched from both sides of the city, and the Crusaders breached inner rampart of the northern wall. The massacre of the Muslims and Jews of Jerusalem that followed has attained particular notoriety as a "juxtaposition of extreme violence and anguished faith". The eyewitness accounts from the Crusaders themselves leave little doubt that there was horrific slaughter. Crusader States With recovery of Jerusalem, attention turned to a problem of at least equal concern to many of the Crusaders; how to establish feudal kingdoms in the captured territories. Hereditary fiefs of land were distributed to nobles and their followers in due degree. By 1109, the region consists of four feudal states that formed a continuous strip along the east Mediterranean. Jerusalem was a kingdom to whose king the other three rulers owed allegiance; Antioch, Tripoli and Edessa. The coastal towns benefited from increased trade as ships from Venice and Genoa arrived with supplies, reinforcements and pilgrims, and returned home with a cargo of long-forgotten Eastern goods for the markets of the West. Enabling pilgrims to reach the holy places of Palestine had been one of the main purposes of the Crusade, and their protection from illness and attack was seen as an important task. These duties prompted the founding of two famous orders of knighthood; the Knights of St John and the Templars. The Crusader States would show impressive staying power considering their precarious position surrounded by Muslim lands. Jerusalem had been seized from Fatimid Egypt (Shia) in a region dominated by Sunni statelets, thus the Crusader States seemed to settle down as just one more power among many in an unsettled region. However, there was one exception to this surprising mood of tolerance; the Turkish governor Zangi of Mosul. Recognizing that the presence of the Crusaders could be used to unite the Muslims of this fragmented region under his own leadership, he urged a jihad against the intruders. He immediately began extending his power westwards. In 1144, Edessa the most exposed of the Crusader States fell to Zangi. Second Crusade With the fall of Edessa, the Muslims of the Middle East discovered a new sense of purpose, while the loss caused a shockwave through western Christendom. The Second Crusade (1147-1150) announced by Pope Eugene III would have much more prestigious leadership than the first: King Louis VII of France (1138-1180 AD) and King Conrad III of Germany (1138-1152 AD). Yet, the expedition was on all fronts a disaster. If the kings found it difficult to control their nobles at home, on campaign it proved next to impossible; even before reaching the Middle East the Byzantine city of Philippopolis was burnt to the ground when a snake charmed was accused of sorcery. In September 1147 AD, the Germans contingent some twenty-thousand strong crossed into Anatolia, but were turned back by the Turks just three days past Byzantine controlled Nicaea. The French contingent that followed some months later made it about half way to Antioch while constantly fending off Turkish raids, before the king and the wealthier knights decided to join the remnants of the German forces who were instead sailing to Jerusalem; the fate of the poorer knights who could not afford the trip remains ominously unclear. Reaching Jerusalem, together they made an ill-conceived and ill-prepared attack on the rich Muslim city of Damascus. After a pathetic effort lasting only four days, the siege of the city was abandoned. The loss of face for the French and German kings was considerable, but more significant damage had also been done to the Crusaders' cause. The Muslim rulers of Damascus had not been hostile to the Crusader States, because they shared an enmity with the aggressive Zangi, now ruler of a broad sweep of territory in Syria. But after the siege of Damascus their patience with the Crusaders was at an end. Meanwhile, the disaster fostered mutual distrust between the Western Europeans, Byzantines, and Crusader States as each searched for a scapegoat. Third Crusade From the middle of the 12th century, the Muslim world was beginning to re-unite, with Iraq and Syria were united under Nur ed-Din in 1154. In 1169, the Sultan sent his greatest general, Saladin, to support Fatimid Egypt against incursions from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Two years later Saladin usurped the Fatimid Caliph. His military successes and able administration quickly smoothed the differences between the Sunni and Shia populations in Egypt. On the death of Nur ed-Din in 1174, Saladin marched on Damascus, where he peacefully entered the city and was named Sultan of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. The entire Muslim world surrounding the Crusader States was now united in a holy cause. Yet, relations between Saladin and the Crusader State were reasonable at first; trade continued and Muslim pilgrims were allowed into Jerusalem. It was disunity among the Crusaders that provided both the opportunity and the pretext for war. In 1185, eight-year-old Baldwin V inherited the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Rivalries during the regency erupted into civil war when the child died a year later. In the chaos, some of the noblemen broke the terms of a truce with Saladin, and plundered a rich caravan making its way from Egypt to Damascus. Travelling with the caravan, as if to aggravate the offence, was Saladin's sister. In May 1187, Saladin crossed the Jordan into the Kingdom of Jerusalem with an army of some twenty-thousand men. At the Battle of Hattin (July 1187), the Muslim armies captured or killed the vast majority of the Crusader forces, essentially removing their capability to wage war. Saladin spent the next two months securing Crusader fortresses: Acre and Gaza capitulate, and Jaffa and Ascalon were besieged and taken. Only the port of Tyre held out against him. By September, Saladin was besieging Jerusalem itself, which surrendered after two weeks. In stark contrast to the Crusaders’ eighy-eight year before, there was no massacre, no destruction, and no looting. A ransom was to be paid for each Christian to depart in freedom, but it was not high. To the very end, the Christian authorities set an appalling example. The archbishop of the city departed with wagon-loads of valuable treasure rather than free fellow Christians who couldn’t afford the ransom. The disaster in the Holy Land prompted the pope in Rome to preach an immediate Third Crusade '''(1189–92). Again the stakes were raised; rather than the two kings who led the previous expedition, this time there were to be three: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Richard the Lionheart of England, and King Philip II of France. Frederick set out first in May 1189, with the largest army ever to march east on a Crusade; about one-hundred-thousand in all. The Byzantine Emperor, Isaac II (1185-1195 AD), could hardly have handled the arrival of a massive German army worse. When he tried to hinder their progress through Byzantine territory, Barbarossa was not amused and occupied the city of Philippopolis, until Isaac gave in and allowed them to cross into Anatolia. However, the Germans never reached the Holy Lands. When crossing a river in eastern Anatolia, the emperor slipped from his horse and drowned, and his massive army aimlessly drifted apart. Meanwhile, the English and French contingent of the Crusaders, some twenty-five-thousand strong, arrived in 1189 AD by sea at Tyre, the last holdout port in Palestine. They immediately joined the prolonged siege of the Muslim held port of Acre, which was already in its eighteenth month; Saladin had been distracted by securing his other conquests, and preparating for the supposed arrival of a massive German army. The exhausted Muslims defenders of Acre surrendered a month later, many of whom were promptly massacred by the Crusaders. With this symbolic task achieved, King Philip returned to France to deal with pressing matters at home. For the next twelve months Richard and Saladin tested each other's strength by military and diplomatic means. Richard won most of the military encounters, often showing outstanding personal courage. However, his forces were too few to hold much of Palestine, and it was soon clear that even if the Crusaders could take Jerusalem, they could not hold a city so far from navel support. Eventually a truce was made in 1192. The Crusaders were allowed to retain a strip along the coast from Acre down to Jaffa, and the existing states of Antioch and Tripoli, as well as Cyprus which had been captured on Richard’s voyage to the Holy Lands. Also, Christian pilgrims were assured free access to all the holy places of Palestine; that in fact had been Saladin’s policy before the Third Crusade. With this much accomplished, Richard set off on his long and disastrous journey home to England. His ship ran onto rocks near Trieste, and he was forced to continue his journey overland in disguise. However, he was recognized in Vienna and handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor. In Europe's game of feudal politics, Richard had often supported opponents of the German emperor, and he was held captive for a year before being released for a massive ransom and an embarrassing oath of loyalty as the emperor's supposed vassal. Italian and Byzantine Tensions The 11th and 12th centuries had been a boom time for the major city-states of Italy, since secured their nominal independence from the Holy Roman Empire, by uniting to drive off an invasion by Emperor Barbarossa in 1176 AD. Italy’s medieval cities prospered and grew rich through the revival of trade and pilgrims with the East thanks to the Crusaders States. Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, and Milan were the outstanding examples. They were strengthened through conflict with each other and with the Fatimid fleets from north Africa. The Italian cities would play a crucial role in the development of financial services, devising the main instruments and practices of banking. In addition, thanks to their favourable position as an intellectual crossroads between East and West, their rich culture would spur the great intellectual and artistic movement of the Renaissance. Meanwhile, the Byzantines were especially concerned by the rise of the Italian Maritime Republics, which quickly began to monopolise trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Though the Crusaders had eased the pressure on their eastern frontier, relations between the Eastern and Western Europeans had deteriorated. When Emperor Manuel (1143-1180) married the daughter of the Duke of Antioch to try and improve relations, the people of Constantinople were horrified. On his death when she became regent to their young son, a wave of anti-Western riots swept the city. She was usurped by Andronikos I (1183-85 AD), the Byzantines greatest general. However, violence was the only solution he knew to deal with any problem, and he began his reign with a massacre of many Italians living in the city. Fourth Crusade Dynastic conflict would compound the troubles of the struggling Byzantine Empire, and accidentally play into the hands of the Italians. In 1195, the emperor Isaac II was deposed and blinded by his brother. However, Isaac's son Alexios escaped and made his way to Western Europe to seek assistance in recovering his throne. Meanwhile in 1201, inspired by the preaching of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216 AD), arrangements were being made for what would become the infamous '''Fourth Crusade (1202-04). This time it was proposed that the Crusaders depart in a great fleet from Venice for their immediate target of Egypt, now thought to be the most vulnerable part of Saladin's empire. Enrico Dandolo, the Venetians Doge, drove a hard bargain; for providing ships for 33,000 Crusaders they demanded an immense sum of money. Behind the scenes, the Doge a master of secret diplomacy assured the Sultan of Egypt that the Crusading fleet would not reach his shores; Venice and Egypt had excellent trading arrangements. Soon the hard facts of commerce were playing into the Doge’s hands. When the Crusading army assembled in Venice, there were only 12,000 men and nowhere near the sum of money agreed. While the Crusaders pondered returning home in debt and disgrace, the Venetians proposed to accept deferred payment, if the Crusaders would do them a small favour on the journey to Egypt. Venice had for a while been disputing control of the port-city of Zara across the Adriatic with Hungary. The Crusaders relunctantly agreed to take the city for them, which they did in November 1202. Then, while the Crusaders over-wintered in Zara, the Venetian Doge began negotiating with the son of the deposed Byzantine Emperor. Alexios proposed to pay all the debt owed by the Crusaders, if they would place him on the throne in Constantinople. Again with some reluctance, the Crusaders agreed. The Pope excommunicated the entire Crusader army but the wily Doge smoothly seduced the Crusaders with the prospect of rich rewards. They reached Constantinople in June 1203, which was caught completely by surprise when a massive fleet of Venetian ships sailed up to the harbour, only blocked by the great chain stretched across its mouth. The Crusaders charged the tower anchoring the chain, and the Byzantine army immediately fled. They then sailed into the imperial harbour, and began assaulting the considerably lower sea walls of Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor was quickly deposed by a mob, and on 1 August, Alexios was crowned emperor in Hagia Sophia. With this achieved, the Crusade should have been able to continue on its way, but now Alexios could not pay his side of the bargain, even after striping the churches of the city of their valuable. For nine months, growing resentment within the city was matched by increasing impatience from the Crusaders outside. Then Alexios was murder by an angry mob within the city. In April, the Venetian Doge persuaded the Crusaders to storm Constantinople. The people of the city put-up a spirited defence but the Crusaders and Venetians took the city. A French eyewitness to the savage three-day sack of Constantinople reported: “''there were more buildings burned to the ground than there are to be found in the three greatest cities of the Kingdom of France''.” The Venetians looted rather than destroyed; St Mark's Basilica in Venice is graced today by many treasures brought back in 1204 including the famed four great bronze horses. In the aftermath, a new Crusader State was established in Constantinople, while the Byzantine Empire survived in exile in Nicaea and Epirus; it would be recaptured by the Byzantines in 1261 AD. When Pope Innocent III heard of the conduct of the Crusaders he sent them a stinging rebuke, though it didn’t stop him later accepting piles of stolen loot offered by the penitent Crusaders. Eight hundred years after the Fourth Crusade, Pope John Paul II apologised to the Greek Orthodox Church for the slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade. Later Crusades Nevertheless, the Crusading ideal remained vivid throughout the 13th century. The Fifth Crusade (1213-1221) occupied the Egyptian port of Damietta, but the entire army was forced to surrender after a disastrous march on Cairo. The Sixth Crusade (1228-1229) involved very little actual fighting, but negotiated some ill-defined influence within Jerusalem; the Western Europeans were evicted after fifteen years. The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) led by King Louis IX of France again occupied Damietta in Egypt, but after his army was defeated, the French had to pay a large ransom for his return. Meanwhile, between 1265 and 1303 the Crusader States and strongholds were steadily picked-off: Antioch fell in 1268; Tripoli in 1289, and in 1291 the fortresses of Acre, Tyre, Beirut and Sidon were taken one by one. Finally, the Templars held-out on the small island of Arwad off the Syrian coast until 1303. With their departure, the Western Europeans were finally swept from the Middle East. The legacy of the Crusades, conceived in a fit of aggressive idealism, was to embitter relations not only between Muslims and Christians, but also meant the schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches was irrevocably complete. England, Anarchy, Becket and Ireland In 1120, the line of Norman kings of England was thrown into doubt by the death of the only legitimate son of Henry I (1100-1135 AD) in the shipwreck of the White Ship. Henry was forced to name his daughter Maude as his heir, but upon his death, most of the English nobles ignored Maude’s claim and Henry’s nephew Stephen (1135-1154 AD) was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. His entire reign was engulfed by a civil war between Stephen, Maude and the local nobility; The Anarchy '''(1135-54). The desultory war dragged on for many years with neither side able to secure an advantage, causing widespread devastation across the realm. By the early 1150s, the nobility and the Church mostly wanted a long-term peace, and in 1153 Stephen agreed a negotiated peace where he retained the throne, but name as his heir Maude's son, Henry II Plantagenet (1154-1189 AD). On Henry's accession, he worked tirelessly to reassert the kings authority over England which was in a lawless state after the years of civil war. His first task was to demolish all the unauthorised castles that unruly nobles had built for themselves without royal licence. Next, Henry improved upon the standards of administration: strengthening the powers of the circuit judges; and formalising the nation’s finance committee with the introduction of the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Meanwhile, the power struggle between Church and state was throughout Europe one of the great issues of the day. Henry conceived what must have seemed a neat solution to this problem, by appointing his trusted friend '''Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury. If he anticipated a compliant archbishop, he was soon disabused. Becket vigorously defends ecclesiastical privileges, and rejected Henry's demand that priests convicted of crimes should be punished by circuit judges like any other citizen. The quarrel escalated, until Becket fled the country in 1164 to safety in a monastery in France. When Henry arranged for the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, from exile and with papal support, Becket suspended all the bishops involved. News of this prompted the Henry’s careless and fatal question: "would no one avenge him of this upstart clerk?” Four knights provided a literal answer by murdering Becket. In the mood following the assassination, the king was forced to do humiliating public penance at Becket's shrine, and concede on all his points on ecclesiastical control. Meanwhile, Henry had eight legitimate children. To provide lands for his younger sons, he seized on the opportunity to intervene in a dynastic struggle in the petty-kingdom of Leinster in Ireland. The Norman invasion of Ireland under Richard 'Strongbow' de Clare carved out Duchies across the east and south of Ireland. The Celtic Irish counteroffensive failed to dislodge the Normans, and a wave of castle-building ensued to cement their conquest in stone. The Treaty of Windsor (1175 AD) that acknowledged Henry’s territorial possessions in Ireland was endorsed by the Pope, who sought to assert papal authority over the still independent Celtic Church. By the end of his reign, Henry controlled England, large parts of Wales, the nearly half of Ireland and, as Duke of Normandy, much of north and western France. Category:Historical Periods